His tone was friendly, intimate, comforting, inviting confidence.
“No, it’s not that. Much more selfish. I was thinking of my own troubles.”
“I didn’t know you had any.”
“Yes, it’s art. You know I have thought for years—three years to be exact—that I would one day be a great painter and today I discovered that I have no talent.”
“You can’t know that; you’re discouraged over some little failure. I don’t know anything about art, but you’ve only been studying a few years and that’s not time enough to tell.”
“Yes, it is—I’ve compared my work with that of other students and I’ve been afraid for some time. Today I asked Burroughs, one of the instructors, and now I know.”
“But that’s only one man’s opinion. Just what did he say?—I know the pedagogue-al formula, three words of praise and one of censure to keep you from being too happy, or three words of adverse criticism and one of praise to keep you from being too discouraged. Wasn’t it like that?”
“No; he just said very frankly that he would not say that I had no future at all, but he did say that if I had any my work at school had never given any indication of it. He said my portraits looked like cartoons, and then he remembered those awful sketches in the Express—” She stopped embarrassed.
“You never will live that down, will you?” said Terry, smiling.
“That isn’t fair, I didn’t mean that, only it’s all so discouraging, to want to paint masterpieces and to be told to draw cartoons.”